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So here’s the thing: Jim’s always been aware he’s not allowed to have nice things. He doesn’t know if it’s the karmic balance from his father dying and saving everything, or if his luck just runs that way, but if Jim really likes something? It goes away.
So Jim pretty much just doesn’t like anything. Problem solved.
He’s sort of gotten around that problem though. If he still really likes something, he doesn’t try to get it. If he can look at it and know it’s there, and think about how nice it would be to have, it’s almost as good as having it to himself.
It’s fucked up.
He doesn’t know how much he cares, though.
Tonight he’s going to drag Bones out to the bars, because Bones is a sad-eyed son of a bitch and he’s gone even sadder the last few days. Jim’s not sure why (that’s a lie; they were on drill when his daughter tried to call and now his ex won’t let him talk to her because it would be “too disappointing to have such sporadic contact”) but he’s going to do something about it, or his name’s not James T Kirk.
The fact that he can make Bones dress in tight jeans and a faded button down shirt with his boots is just … well, if you’re not expecting something nice, and it happens anyway, right? Jim’s cool. He’s got his head on straight. Bones is a fuckup now, but even so he’s out of Jim’s league. He’s had a family, a real one, and he had a career and a home and things, good things. He’s just here for a little bit to get ready for better ones.
Jim, and he’s pretty clear on this one, Jim’s just here to learn how to die good like his father did. Die a hero, have a wreath laid at his grave every year. It'll be awesome, but he'll still be dead.
“You’re a fuckwit,” says his mother.
“Ma,” says Jim.
“You are a total fuckwit,” she says. She’s about a parsec out, so Jim doesn’t actually get smacked over the back of the head with the casual, irritated affection of a mother cat with a retarded kitten, but she’s thinking about it, Jim can tell, even through the screen. “I’m ashamed to have borne such a boneheaded asshole. Why the fuck are you not nailing him through the bed?”
“You know, I hear some people talk to their mothers, and it’s not traumatising or profane at all,” Jim says. “Also I think Dr Hyun told me this technically counts as bad touch, talking to me like this.”
His mother waves her hand, dismissing him. “I want you to be happy. If this includes kicking your ass until you hook a doctor, then so much the better.” There was a little pause. “My mother wanted me to marry a doctor,” she says, thoughtfully.
Jim reels back a little.
“It’s good money!” says his mother. “Of course then the only doctor I ever thought about banging was in the Fleet anyway. Nice guy. Tattoos everywhere. Ended up in the Reserves, such a waste.”
Jim covers his hands. “I think the part that actually horrifies me the most is that you almost married a reservist.”
“Shh,” says his mother. “Go. Marry a doctor for me, baby. He can fix your sorry ass for free when you break it, won’t that be nice?”
“Ma,” sighs Jim.
“I’m serious!” says his mother. Behind her, something crashes, then a siren begins to blare. She cuts an annoyed look behind her. “Nudrek, you fucking son of a bitch, if that was something important, I am skinning you to fix it!” She looks at Jim again. “Just try,” she says. “What harm can it do?”
A lot, thinks Jim, but before he can reply his mother shouts, “Why can’t you change one stupid warp coil by yourself, you incompetent fool? Your mother lay with dogs! Your sister lay with the blue-skinned ones! Bye, Jim!” and cuts the transmission.
Jim … doesn’t know what he feels about his mother some days. Dr Hyun would get a migraine.
He closes his tablet down and picks up his keys. Even without his mother trying to get him to marry a doctor (which is ridiculous, fucking stupid, and also impossible, but Jim’s not going any further down that road), he’s got to cheer Bones up, and what better way than beautiful people and copious booze?
(A year later, Bones says to him, “Jim, you can’t actually cheer people up by offering them things you like.”
“Why not?” says Jim.
“Because Vulcans don’t get drunk off alcohol, you idiot! And Spock doesn’t even like whores.”
“Spock is boring,” says Jim, with conviction.
Tonight, however, there’s nobody here to tell him that.)
Bones says he doesn’t want a nice girl, or a not-nice girl. He doesn’t want a boy, or an alien with tentacles waving from its spine. Bones says he doesn’t care if Jim buys him beer, or whiskey, or anything at all. Bones doesn’t notice the girls staring at him, or the boys licking their lips.
Jim just wants to make sure Bones has something nice. And if Bones won’t tell him what he wants, Jim can find out on his own. He’s smart, which as he has been repeatedly told is about the only thing he has going for him -- and sometimes people aren’t so sure about the smart part. Neither is Jim, really.
He’s just … a little surprised, is all. Well, and in a brief, blinding panic, that makes him almost glad that Bones bolts away before Jim can, because that was supposed to be a joke, adding in that guy who looked like Jim. Just a reminder to himself that Bones isn’t. Even. Interested.
Except.
Jim has to go to a quiet corner of the library and solve equations in his head for a couple of minutes and then he has to go to his room and stare at the wall for a little longer.
Well, he thinks. If that’s what Bones wants, then Jim will give it to him.